Description
Joshua Ryder is eight when his mother is murdered. An old cowboy becomes the father he has never had and when he is dying asks Josh, now eighteen, to leave the ranch with their neighbor, Miguel, and get some experience working for another outfit. Riding Shadow, the buckskin he’s raised from a colt, Josh comes to the Rawlins’ ranch and hires on to help drive a herd of longhorns to Kansas. Martha Rawlins, the widowed ranch owner and her children, accompany the herd and she teaches Josh to read and write while on the trail. He becomes friends with the Rawlins’ son, falls in love with the older daughter, and adores her little sister, Kit. Another tragedy again changes the course of Josh’s life and he heads back to Texas to hunt down the man who murdered his mother.
Book is also available through Amazon and BN or ask for it wherever books are sold.
“Along Shadowed Trails is a wonderful story mixing the rich Kansas history of cattle drives with lawless end-of-the-trail towns and great historical characters populating both. Thoroughly researched, Eunice Boeve is a Kansas writer whose family history is firmly set in the west.” —Ronald D. Smith, Author Thomas Ewing Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General
About Author
Eunice Boeve, a Kansas resident, grew up in Montana and Idaho. She attributes her love of stories to her mother, an avid reader who read to her children as they were growing up, and her father, who wrote a book about his cowboy days in Wyoming. Sadly, her father died when she was five, and the book was never published.
Ron Smith, Author of “The Wastage” –
Along Shadowed Trails a Must! The west is full of stories where cattle are central to the plot. A slobbery cranky animal, cattle are either being roped, branded or driven somewhere. Along Shadowed Trails is a wonderful story mixing the rich Kansas history of cattle drives with lawless end-of-the-trail towns and great historical characters populating both. Thoroughly researched, Eunice Boeve is a Kansas writer whose family history is firmly set in the west. This western has an unusual twist to the end. Along Shadowed Trails is a great read!
L. Sand –
An Authentic Western – Young Josh Ryder is orphaned at the age of eight and taken in by Pete Waters, a goodhearted old cowboy who treats Josh like the son he never had and teaches him the cowboy trade. As Josh becomes a teenager, he is driven to not only find out who his real father was, but to find and bring to justice the outlaw who murdered his young mother. When Pete dies, Josh has nothing to stop him, except experience. Along a Shadowed Trail (formerly titled Ride a Shadowed Trail) is a young man’s quest to unveil the truth of his past regardless of what he might discover. In this action-packed journey, the lessons of life and love are oftentimes learned the hard way, and as Josh becomes a man of integrity and worth, he discovers that blood is NOT always thicker than water. The reader will be thoroughly engaged by the story’s authenticity. The author writes with emotion, clarity, and a true knowledge and understanding of the era that can only come from someone whose roots are in the West.
Watchfuli –
Looking Forward to Reading the Sequel – The child of a Mexican prostitute, Josh Ryder has an unpromising start in life. But in a world where many people have nothing more to offer than their good name, Eunice Boeve has created a hero we want to follow from page one. Josh’s relationships with an assortment of characters—from the kindly Pete Waters who becomes a surrogate father to the boy, to the lovely Belle whom Josh loves as a young man—keeps the reader hanging on for more. As Josh pursues his mother’s killer, he rides a ‘shadowed trail’ where life doesn’t always turn out the way you expected. I, for one, greatly looked forward to the sequel.
Marilyn Hope Lake, Ph.D. –
Brings Smiles and Tears – I first read Along Shadowed Trails by it’s original title, Ride a Shadowed Trail. It was the third one of Eunice Boeve’s books that I have read, and I had great expectations for it—expectations that were richly rewarded. The fullness of her characterizations combined with the way the characters’ lives are intertwined, gives this book a depth far beyond the storyline description and immerses the reader in a lost time, in a real place, with people and even animals you will care about and sometimes cry for. The book actualizes the character, Pete Waters’ words. “…most all of us rides a shadowed trail.” Boeve’s research into real historic people’s lives and her story-telling ability makes this book a page turner that will bring smiles to your lips and tears to your eyes. And, if you are a horse lover, you’ll be pleased by the author’s knowledge and love of her equine characters too. A great read! I highly recommend it.